09:00 on 2012/07/31 Reply  

• John 10:03 on 2012/07/31 Permalink

  Well, that’s my luck right there. We finally get a space and the government proposes to end the programme.

• Marc 10:04 on 2012/07/31 Permalink

  You can deny the existence of inflation only for so long, then it bites you in the ass.

• Bill Binns 10:05 on 2012/07/31 Permalink

  Gasp! The next thing you know, the goverment will expect parents to provide food and shelter for their own children as well.

• Kate 10:23 on 2012/07/31 Permalink

  Turn it down, Bill Binns. Your “fuck you, I’ve got mine” attitude is both offensive and passé.

• Kevin 10:25 on 2012/07/31 Permalink

  It’s been $7 for what, 8 years now?
  Yeesh, governments should just be pro-active and set EVERY price to be cost-of-living adjusted. One real omnibus bill and boom done like dinner.

• cheese 10:26 on 2012/07/31 Permalink

  I appreciate that you used the word “fabled” Kate, we have a little one and have been trying to get her into a garderie since the day she was born (almost two years ago). Not possible, there are not nearly enough places. We were offered a place at a couple of expensive (around $50 a day) establishments but even they were not up to scratch.

  The actual $7 per day places near us are very oversubscribed, with three year waits and really no way to get in unless you are a well known person in Quebec. The waiting lists are ignored and often “lost”. We are in the Plateau and though there seem to be a lot of day care facilities in reality it is seriously lacking in decent garderies at any price.

• Ian 10:36 on 2012/07/31 Permalink

  Not always, cheese. Make sure you ask right when school gets out for summer and right before school starts again as this is when spots open up. Many garderies will also give priority to kids in the area. Be persistent, that’s how I got my eldest in anyhow, and my youngest gets in on the siblings-thereof dime. And yes, it’s a $7-a-day. I can accept that prices go up but an extra $3 a day is a lot out-of-pocket for many families. Once again we have to ask ourselves where our government’s priorities lie… it’s not that the money isn’t there, it’s that they choose to spend it elsewhere. On a note of caution, I know a lot of people in other provinces that one parent simply stays home because it’s not worthwhile to send your kid to daycare if you make less than 40k a year. No, $10 isn’t THAT much compared to $20 or $30 in private garderie but let’s be realistic – it’s this kind of death by a thousand cuts that is reshaping Quebec into yet another neoliberal “business first” shell of the social and democratic potential that was promised by the Quiet Revolution.

• walkerp 10:37 on 2012/07/31 Permalink

  Just one more attempt to move money from the public to the private and continue exacerbating the separation between the rich and the poor in North America.

• Ephraim 11:51 on 2012/07/31 Permalink

  These programs need to be indexed, if only for the sake or protecting them. It’s a nice idea, but forgetting to index them eventually creates problems. Even if you index them just once a year.

• Ian 12:10 on 2012/07/31 Permalink

  Great then, index them to the cost of living like most people’s raises.

• paul 12:41 on 2012/07/31 Permalink

  Good move, the costs to run the daycares have been rising for years – everyone needs to pay their share, not just the general taxpayer. At least keep it indexed with inflation.

  Maybe with increased funding we could get more spaces for all.

• qatzelok 13:29 on 2012/07/31 Permalink

  If you want your kids to “come out right,” it’ll cost you. Because children are a private investment, just like antiques or collectible ornaments.

• Ian 13:34 on 2012/07/31 Permalink

  Right, and my taxes shouldn’t go to the fire department because my house isn’t on fire. It’s called the social contract, folks. Our system requires funding toward the greater good through a widely distributed tax base. If you want to be a libertarian go live in a shack in the far north off the grid.

• Bill Binns 14:24 on 2012/07/31 Permalink

  I would like to know how much daycare cost per day per child after the parent throws in their $7.00 vs. how much that parent earns per day at the job the daycare makes possible(they all have jobs right? You shouldn’t need daycare if you don’t have a job). I suspect the province is often paying $40.00 a day in daycare to free a parent up to go out and earn 60-70. Why not just pay people a salary to sit at home and raise their own kids? The parents would be no worse off. Their kids would likely be far better off and thousands of jobs would open up for people who are available to do them.

• jeather 14:34 on 2012/07/31 Permalink

  Yes, there’s no reason for a parent to be unwilling to take 5 years out of the job market in the assumption that, once their child starts kindergarten, they will have no trouble finding a job again.

  (The problem with not indexing anything to inflation — with readjustments every 4 years or whatever — is that suddenly you need a huge jump.)

• walkerp 15:27 on 2012/07/31 Permalink

  I love how people on the right are always going on about the nanny state but then have no problem knowing what is best for others:

  “The parents would be no worse off. Their kids would likely be far better off and thousands of jobs would open up for people who are available to do them.”

• qatzelok 16:29 on 2012/07/31 Permalink

  As usual, they do things better in the states. In the USA, if you can’t afford a private daycare, you just sit them in front of the TV all day and let Spiderman and Ronald McDonald raise them. And this makes them better consumers of all kinds of merchandise – win, win.

• Bill Binns 16:39 on 2012/07/31 Permalink

  In the States, people are forced to actually think through the decision to spend hundreds of dollars a week to store their kids someplace so they can go out an earn hundreds of dollars a week at a job. This is an easy decision in Quebec because daycare is paid for by magic Quebec dollars that fall from the sky in limitless quantities and always will.

• Ian 16:44 on 2012/07/31 Permalink

  I suppose you have no idea how much all those people whose children are in garderie might be contributing to the economy as workers, eh, Binns? Or how having extra pocket money might stimulate spending and the economy, maybe even allowing young families to save for a house or a car instead of being wage slaves – further contributing to the economy? Or maybe how much having a bit more money earned improves the household and the conditions in which a child is raised? It’s like none of you realize that investing in kids is investing in Quebec. Oh wait, you don’t want to invest in higher education either – no surprises there after all. If the goal of the government is to save money for tightwads that don’t like to share and don’t give a damn about less fortunate people or the future of our society, it looks like the Liberals are on the right track.

• Bill Binns 17:03 on 2012/07/31 Permalink

  @Ian – This tightwad is currently “sharing” just under half of my income before I start paying sales taxes. This idea that subsidised daycare somehow pays for itself because it allows people to work is a shell game at best. If the govermnet has to pay $200 a week so that someone can go out and earn $400, this is a winning strategy? What about when the family has multiple kids?? I would love to know how many families are costing the goverment more money in daycare than they are earning at work. How often is double or triple the amount they earn? Somehow we never see these types of statistics. The important thing is that people are made to feel like they are taking care of their kids and contributing to society even of they are not. Is that the case?

• Kevin 17:17 on 2012/07/31 Permalink

  @Bill — the govt pays about $35/kid, more or less, depending on the size of the daycare. (and how is it even possible to earn $60 a day in a province where min. wage is $9.90/hr?)

  *******

  I’m rather unique in that I’ve had daycare in the USA and here in Quebec.

  In NYC I was shelling out $35/day and I had to provide my own food for the kid. Of course, I was earning New York money so that was affordable, but if we had just been on my wife’s scholarship it would have meant me staying at home instead. I knew several people with nannies, even if only part-time.

  Here we easily got into $7 daycare — and had no problems getting our second kid in under the little brother/sister rule. (It may have helped that my wife was on the board at the time, but since every second or third sibling gets in, it seems to be a universal rule)

  The daycare’s large enough, 60 kids, so we see a wide-enough range of parents. Most are professionals, earning $25-$60/hr. I’d guess less than 20% of the parents are earning somewhere around $15-20/hr.

  There are a handful, maybe 6 kids, from what the government deems less fortunate families, and the government pays the whole cost for them. The idea is that 1) The kids learn to socialize and 2) the parents have the chance to learn skills and try to find work.

• Ant6n 03:20 on 2012/08/01 Permalink

  Omg getting a kid is a total get-rich-quick scheme…

• Ian 05:51 on 2012/08/01 Permalink

  “@Ian – This tightwad is currently “sharing” just under half of my income before I start paying sales taxes.” Oh, I get it – you’re well-off and are tired of the poors with their hands in your pocket. Boo hoo. I find it offensive that you assume that everyone who disagrees with you is somehow exempt from paying taxes.

• Chris 08:34 on 2012/08/01 Permalink

  Ian, saying “If you want to be a libertarian go live in a shack in the far north” is as silly as me telling you: “If you want to be a socialist, go live in Sweden.”

  Bill, everyone dislikes paying taxes for things they don’t directly benefit from. But subsidizing daycare is no worse than subsidizing the road network. 1/3 of Montrealers don’t have a car, but they too contribute to the billions and billions spent of road creation and repairs. I’m sure more of your taxes go to that than to daycare. But somehow I suspect you have a car, and don’t object.

  Lastly, I think part of the reason Québec has subsidized daycare, unlike neighbouring jurisdictions, is, to be blunt, to encourage people to have more children, especially of the pure laine variety.

• Michel 09:24 on 2012/08/01 Permalink

  For two and a half years, we had our son in private daycare, couldn’t get him into a CPE. Those daycares cost us $40/day. That $200/week puts such a huge strain on a family, both financially and psychologically. Good luck to you if you get laid off, which I did. “Oh, just take the kid out of daycare then.” Yeah, about that: try finding a job when you’re taking care of your kid.
  Furthermore, there’s no oversight on private daycares. There are two inspectors for all the private daycares in Quebec. Consequently, my kid was abused at his first daycare (look up Garderies Souriant G). Those places are run as a “for-profit” basis only, and there’s no regard for the kids. “Educators” come and go within a matter of weeks, there’s no attention brought to kids, etc.
  The lad has been in a CPE since last September. His educators have been working there for the past 15 years or so, there’s a strong foundation, a gym, etc.
  Were the government to stop funding these places, it would be a massive shame. Seems to me—though my memory may be fucked—that part of the social contract between Quebec and its citizens was that, because there was a negative population growth, that the gubmint decided to make it easier, i.e. less expensive, to have kids.

• Kate 09:34 on 2012/08/01 Permalink

  Bill Binns: “In the States, people are forced to actually think through the decision to spend hundreds of dollars a week to store their kids someplace so they can go out an earn hundreds of dollars a week at a job.”

  So tell me, Bill Binns: no poor people in the U.S. have children they can’t strictly afford to have? Everyone takes the free market into consideration before indulging in unprotected sex?

  That’s very impressive!

• jeather 09:51 on 2012/08/01 Permalink

  Even if you don’t have a car, you profit from a well-maintained and effective road network. Or you would, if we had that here. Equally, even if you don’t currently have a small child, you profit from an affordable daycare system. (Children are the ones who will support us, in aggregate, in the future; parents [which is, realistically, to say mothers] are well-served by not having to give up on careers and 5 years of earnings and work experience; people are well-served by having safe preschools with oversight. There are of course aspects of the system that don’t work — maybe 7$ is the wrong price, maybe there aren’t enough spots, maybe spots are given out based on who you know — but that doesn’t mean the entire system is terrible and we should go to this mythical ideal of a household entirely supported by a single income.

• Bill Binns 09:55 on 2012/08/01 Permalink

  @Kate, yes of course people are having kids they cannot afford. This is a longstanding fast track to a life of poverty. There are also many millions of people who work for a living, who spend more than five minutes thinking about what they want to do with their life and have kids when they are capable of raising them. How much money should we forcibly take from the second group to give to the first? How long before the second group doesn’t have enough money left to raise children responsibly and just decides not to do it all?

  If the story of the ant and the grasshopper took place in Quebec, come winter, the ant would have been villified as a cheap, heartless bastard and the grasshopper the poor victim who is starving to death through no fault of his own.

• ant6n 11:05 on 2012/08/01 Permalink

  In a responsible society, having a child SHOULD be a sure-way into proverty. Having kids is for rich people, after all. Let the market decide.

• Bill Binns 11:23 on 2012/08/01 Permalink

  Was Googling around looking for info on the daycare thing and stumbled on this. http://nodogsoranglophones.blogspot.com/2012/05/7-day-daycare-defines-quebec-as-loser.html

  This explains my own position much better than I could (nice to know i’m not the only one). I love the cartoon at the top and the video that does a great job of explaining the broken windows fallacy.

• walkerp 12:56 on 2012/08/01 Permalink

  I’ve lived in several major cities in North America and Montreal far and away has the best social support for children. And it shows. Why do you think so many of our Olympic athletes come from Quebec?

• walkerp 13:06 on 2012/08/01 Permalink

  I read No Dogs or Anglophones from time to time, but I’ve never dipped into the comments section. Wow, is that ugly. That horrible anglo-Canadian resentment and small-mindedness that drove me from BC in the first place. Ugh. “I’m so angry that other people are getting good things and paying less for them while I work so hard” wah wah wah. It’s amazing how much hate is directed towards Quebec by people who are well-fed, well-sheltered and working. Bunch of losers. Why don’t you all move to the States and see what it’s really like to live in a society without a social safety net. I’m sure you’ll all love it since you are so industrious and self-sufficient. Ha ha, yeah, good luck with that.

• ant6n 15:11 on 2012/08/01 Permalink

  @Bill
  Besides a bunch of red herrings, rants, and the old trope about transfer payment, the article is not very relevant, and there are only maybe three lucid arguments there.

  And the broken window fallacy doesn’t apply; subsidized day care isn’t value destruction, it’s merely shifting wealth towards young families, which helps keeping them out of proverty and encourages having children. That’s a good thing, because you probably can’t fight the demographic change with immigration alone.

• Jean Naimard 23:29 on 2012/08/02 Permalink

  Bill Bins is the proverbial «maudit anglais» from which we are labouring so much to get rid of.

• Ant6n 01:57 on 2012/08/03 Permalink

  @jean
  no he isn’t. He is an immigrant, entitled to his opinion, and probably not interested in your crusade against English canadians

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